WASHINGTON – Testimony in Donald Trump’s trial in New York is complete after more than four weeks and nearly two dozen witnesses, meaning the case heads into the crucial final stretch of closing arguments, jury deliberations and possibly a verdict.
It’s impossible to say how long this will all take, but in a historic trial that has seen its fair share of memorable moments, this week could easily be the most important.
Here’s what to expect in the coming days:
Starting Tuesday morning, prosecutors and defense attorneys will have their last opportunity to address the jury in closing arguments that are expected to last much of the day, if not all of it.
The arguments do not count as evidence in the case accusing Trump of falsifying business records to cover up secret payments during the 2016 presidential election to a porn star who claimed to have had a sexual encounter with him a decade earlier. Instead, they will function as hours-long recaps of the key points lawyers want to leave jurors before the panel disappears behind closed doors for deliberations.
Look for prosecutors to remind jurors that they can trust the financial documentation they have seen and the witnesses they have heard from. These include porn star Stormy Daniels, whose account of an alleged sexual encounter with Trump is at the center of the case, and Trump’s former lawyer and personal mediator Michael Cohen, who testified that Trump was directly involved in the hush money scheme and in authorized payments.
It is worth remembering that the defense, which called only two witnesses, but not Trump, does not need to prove anything or convince the jurors of Trump’s innocence.
To avoid a conviction, the defense only needs to convince at least one juror that prosecutors did not prove Trump’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, the standard for criminal cases.
Let’s hope the defense tries to poke holes in the government’s case by disputing Daniels’ testimony about his meeting with Trump in the hotel suite and distancing Trump from the mechanics of the refunds to Cohen, who was responsible for the secret $130,000 payment to Daniels.
The defense may also assert one last time that Trump was more concerned about protecting his family from salacious stories, not winning the election, when it comes to the hush money that was paid.
And it will certainly attack the credibility of Cohen, who pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the payment and who was accused by Trump’s lawyers of lying even while on the witness stand. How much of your testimony does the jury believe will go a long way toward determining the outcome of the case.
Since the prosecution bears the burden of proof, it will deliver its summary last – in the reverse order of the opening statements, in which the prosecution came first.
A critical moment will occur, perhaps on Wednesday morning, before the jury begins its deliberations.
Judge Juan M. Merchan is expected to spend about an hour instructing the jury on the law governing the case, providing a roadmap on what they can and cannot take into consideration when assessing the former Republican president’s guilt or innocence.
In an indication of the importance of these instructions, prosecutors and defense lawyers had a lively debate last week, outside the presence of the jury, as they tried to persuade Merchan of the instructions he should give.
Trump’s team, for example, sought an instruction informing jurors that the types of secret payments at issue in Trump’s case are not inherently illegal, a request that one prosecutor called “wholly inappropriate.” Merchan said such an instruction would go too far and be unnecessary.
Trump’s team also asked Merchan to consider the “extraordinarily important” nature of the case when issuing his instructions and to urge jurors to reach “very specific conclusions.” Prosecutors also objected to this, and Merchan agreed that it would be wrong to deviate from standard instructions.
“When you say this is a very important case, you are asking me to change the law, and I’m not going to do that,” Merchan said.
Prosecutors, however, requested an instruction that someone’s candidate status need not be the sole motivation for making a payment that benefits the campaign. Defense attorneys asked that jurors be told that if a payment had been made even though the person was not running, it should not be treated as a campaign contribution.
Deliberations will take place in secret, in a room specifically reserved for jurors and in an intentionally opaque process.
Jurors can communicate with the court through notes that ask the judge, for example, for legal advice or for specific excerpts of testimony to be read to them. But without knowing what the judges are saying to each other, it’s difficult to read much into the meaning of any score.
No one knows how long the jury will deliberate and there is no time limit either. The jury must consider 34 counts of falsifying business records, which could take some time and the verdict may not be released until the end of the week.
To reach a verdict, guilty or not guilty, all 12 jurors must agree on the decision for the judge to accept it.
Things will get more complicated if the jury is unable to reach a consensus after several days of deliberations. Although defense attorneys may ask for an immediate mistrial, Merchan is likely to call jurors and instruct them to continue trying to reach a verdict and to be willing to reconsider their positions without abandoning their conscience or judgment just to agree with the others.
If, after this instruction, the jury is still unable to reach a verdict, the judge has the option of finding the panel hopelessly deadlocked and declaring a mistrial.
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Associated Press writers Jennifer Peltz, Michael R. Sisak and Jake Offenhartz in New York contributed to this report.
